Abstract

As autonomous and smart technologies become increasingly part of everyday life, what can we learn from Nature to enable improvements in their capabilities?

A particularly key advantage of biological systems is in their energy efficiency and multi-functional structures. Over the course of evolutionary history, biological systems have developed functional structures for sensing, computation and actuation that are far more frugal in their energy usage – by orders of magnitude – compared to human engineered systems. Moreover, nature manages to fabricate exquisite multi-functional structures at a range of scales at ambient temperature and low energy using readily available raw materials.

The aim of this seminar is to explore the principles of design and system architecture  in natural living systems that might inspire the next generation of real world application technologies that are capable of a high degree of autonomy and resilience in complex environments.

Speakers

Presentations from leading UK academics will examine the state of knowledge in biological systems and how this might influence the development of technologies for engineered system applications. The knowledge gained from insight into natural paradigms, it is hoped, will lead to significant improvements in capability and resilience.

Two sessions will cover underpinning science and systems & applications.

See the attached event flyer: Agenda